Response Qualification

One or more HOT volunteers research a crisis situation to acquire more information and recommend further response.

What are the triggers for this response?

A news report of a severe humanitarian situation.

A report on a public mailing list, such as Crisis Mappers.

A request by a partner organization (say, ICRC, or IOM) for a HOT intervention.

What are the intended outcomes of the response or activation?

A report to the HOT mailing list, identifying which actions HOT should take, based on our activation protocols, and taking into account the nature of the crisis.

Within HOT, who decides to initiate the response, and when?

Any volunteer can take this on, but they should let others know they are doing it, to allow coordination of effort. A short post to the mailing list would suffice.

What are the volunteer resources needed by HOT to provide this response?

A few hours of some volunteer's time, spent reading reports, and possibly sending emails or making phone calls.

What are the material resources, including funds, needed by HOT to provide this response?

None.

What, if any, coordination is needed with other organizations?

None, although it may be important to liase with other orgs to find out how they are responding to the crisis.

How long will the response last? At what point is the response declared complete?

The response qualification task should take at most a few hours. However, it may need to be repeated over the course of an ongoing crisis, as events change and new information becomes available.

How many times per month or per year can HOT sustainably provide this response?

Probably once or twice a week, with surge capacity.

Describe a historical precedent for this response *or* a hypothetical future response of this kind.

News of a powerful earthquake appears on Twitter, followed by the major news media. An HOT volunteer mails the list with an independent report about the quake, and offers to provide a response qualification to the list within three hours. The volunteer reads further news and social media reports about the quake, and observes other organizations responding on public mailing lists. He or she sends an email to points-of-contact at one or two partner organizations, to find out what they're up to. The volunteer consults the HOT activation protocols, to determine which ones apply. Finally, three hours later, the volunteer reports to the HOT list, recommending which responses HOT should engage, over what time frame. The volunteer also requests that another volunteer do a repeat assessment in 48 hours, after reports of the quake damage are more detailed and better confirmed.